Thursday, December 29, 2011

When I was a child I
dreamed of having an attic - one like in-the-movies or at least like the one of
my very vivid imagination.Newer houses
don't have cool attics - they have crawl spaces or inaccessible places that
only hold insulation and dust.I remember looking at the attic hatch in my childhood home and thinking how
sad it was that mom and dad didn't build a cool one.

I finally have a cool
attic.It's more than 150 years old and accessed
by crooked stairs in the far-back-room.The house leans heavily to the south-west in that corner making ascending
and descending the stairs something you don't do without a few seconds of
thought.The stairs are steep -
somewhere between really steep and a ladder.When you look at each tread you can see that
the original steps were covered over with 2x6's - probably because the groove
where your foot would touch the stairs was almost worn right through.Very COOL.The attic's best feature??- it
can be closed with a trapdoor that weighs about 100 pounds - we plan to hide up
there when the zombies come and drop the door on their heads if they come after
us!

Once you've traversed
the stairs you find yourself in a chipboard paneled room with a low ceiling -
ok - the chipboard isn't very original or dreamy however it does save you from
the falling chunks of plaster.There's
no heat up there in the winter so it's a great second fridge or freezer
depending on the outdoor temperatures.In the summer it does double duty as a dehydrator - wow - it's hot.There's only one single-paned window that
doesn't open and one light bulb with a pull string.Rather bare bones but still it has the stuff that
imagination is made of… think Home Alone!

Having an attic (and
a garage and a barn) means I've never had so much storage space in all my
life.The attic holds Christmas
decorations, the overflow from my daughters room (she has a LOT of stuff!) and assorted chairs and
leftovers that need to be shoved somewhere out of eyesight.I can actually leave stuff lying around up
there - boxes opened and randomly shoved this way and that.I suppose no one can really understand my
excitement over this until they've lived in a teeny-tiny-house with 7 adults
where you had to turn sideways in the hall to pass each other.Space is such a luxury and one I think I
will never quite get over.

I can already see the
danger of it all though.Why get rid of
stuff - there's lots of room!Someone
will ask - do you want this widget and rather than say - NO I HAVE NO ROOM FOR
IT (which seems more polite than NO I just-plain-don't-want-it.) I may be tempted to just say YES - every time!It appears I need to think up anotherconvenient excuse because I have acres of
space, miles of closet shelves, a garage, a barn and
an ATTIC!

Now you have to
understand why I'm so worried - My name is Anita and I like stuff - especailly if it's red, old fashioned, cool neat stuff. I spent the 5 years previous to our move here de-cluttering our
whole tiny house - TWICE!The first
time around I wasn't as ruthless as I should have been so I went on to ROUND-TWO!I don't want to lose the momentum that set us free from CHAOS. I remember the days of boxes and mess and too much laundry and never being able to find anything.I'm a little afraid the Clutter Monster is
gonna-get-me!

We've done so well since we got here but lately I've noticed a marked increase in the items coming through the door. It just sorta follows us home - like the fancy-metal-scroll-work-table we found on the side of the road that only needed a coat of spray paint or the adorable dishes I needed for Christmas dinner.

I am facng my fear today. I am cleaning up the Christmas decorations and putting things away in their proper boxes which I will line up in neat rows in the attic. I will not let this get out of hand. I will live by my boundaries and say NO when I am offered things I don't really want. I will stay on the wagon! I will reclaim the ATTIC! Take that Clutter Monster!

I am a mom to many and a wife to my best friend. We live on 10 acres of heaven on a small farm that needs lots of work and will keep us busy for years! We love people coming to visit, animals and the peace and quiet that you can only appreciate after living in the city for 20 years. I love to write about our adventures in homesteading, country living, food storage, canning and emergency preparedness.
Please feel free to share any information from this site in part or in full by giving credit to me as author, including a link to www.adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.ca

Saturday, December 24, 2011

In the stillness of a
cold winter night being with the animals in the barn is one of my favorite
places to be.I can just imagine…

It was evening- we
were waiting for Farmer Luke and Farmer Mom to come out to the barn and tuck us
into our nice warm pens where fresh hay and grain awaited us each night.My friends Lamb-chops and Flanders the sheep
waited with their thick woolly coats covered in bits of hay from reaching up
into the manger for the last of the hay in the outdoor feeder.Mr. Sheepie waited while keeping a close eye
on the comings and goings of Annabelle and Clementine as they rounded up their
chicken friends so they could all run into the barn together when dinner was
served in the chicken coop.Sir Winston
and Lady Bella waited while bobbing their heads to some internal beat of their
own - ducks are a bit strange that way.

It was very quiet
except for the soft clucking of the chickens when Annabelle spoke up and asked
me to tell a story while we all waited. Donkeys have the tradition of being the
barnyard storytellers so I thought back to the stories I had heard from my mother
when I was just a colt.My favorite
story was one I had asked for many times - my mother had pretended to be tired
of telling it to me but I could tell from the sound of her voice as she told it
that it was her favorite too.

The sheep settled
down in a pile a straw and the chickens and a few of the ducks gathered round
finding places to roost on the beams above our heads.My best friend Gertie sat right beside me
clucking her encouragement as I took a deep hee-haw breath and began to tell
the tale.

It was in a place
very much like this barn and a very long time ago.That barn was home to another family of
animals - just like us.My
great-great-great-great grandmother (maybe a few more greats - my mom wasn't
quite sure) was there one night when something so wonderful and so spectacular
happened that she could never forget it.

It was a cold night
and the other barnyard animals were talking excitedly about their day. The
chickens always had lots to talk about - the big worm they had found in the
apple orchard or finding the grain on the side of the road that had fallen off
of the farmers cart on his way to market.But it wasn't any of those things they were talking about that day.It wasn't a usual day for the goats either of
being let out to graze in the fields with the goat herders near by or being
frightened by a bear in the distance that the goat herders had to chase away.

This was an
extra-special-very-un-ordinary-day because some guests had arrived in the
barn.The animals were very curious about them.One of the guests stood quietly near them munching some hay with a
far-away look in her eyes. The others were in the sheep and donkey stall.The animals were trying to decide who they
could send to speak with her and finally decided to send my great grandma to
have a donkey-to-donkey talk while they quietly crowded around to see
what she would say. The cows bell jingled softly around her neck as she
strained to hear what was being said.The chickens quietly clucked to themselves - wondering what was
happening.The ducks just bobbed their
heads making no sound at all which as very unusual for them.Grandma joined the guest at the feeder and
introduced herself.I'm Grandma Maybe -
what brings you to our barn this cold night?The guest finished chewing her hay before answering - for it's impolite
for donkeys to speak with their mouths full.With the quietest hee-haw she whispered - I came with those people over
there. The man kept saying - we need to get to Bethlehem.

Grandma Maybe looked
into the stall where she usually slept with her friends.The light from a moonbeam streamed right into
the pen so she could see quite well.In
the hay manger - right on top of their nightly ration of hay was a BABY!It's parents were looking at him with big
smiles on their faces.

What was a baby doing
in there!!

A few minutes later
the barn got even busier!All the
shepherds came in!They seemed excited and curious.They looked
at the baby with big smiles on their faces too.

Weren't they supposed
to be looking after the sheep??

One of the shepherds
was a young boy who was always very friendly to all the animals.He came over to scratch Grandma Maybe between
the ears.He seemed to be thinking
really hard about something and then he said:

Grandma Maybe: we saw
angels tonight.They sang to us out in
the fields!One of them told us: “Don’t
be afraid! I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people.The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has
been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!And you will recognize him by this sign: You
will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”...and look - THERE HE IS - just like they
told us!

The barn was very still - you could only hear the sound of the gentle wind outside as Maybe finished the story. Lamb-chops the sheep
was the first to speak "That was a special
night!I wish I was there to see it
myself." The other animals nodded in agreement.

Then they all heard
the sound of Farmer Luke and Farmer Mom coming towards the barn - they wouldn't have to wait any longer for their evening meal.The animals remained unusually quiet as they made their way into their suppers and then their beds - no loud quacking or clucking or hee-hawing or baaaaaing - everyone just
went peacefully into their pens and thought and thought about the story Maybe had
told them.

No more waiting...

“Glory to God in
highest heaven, and peace on earth to
those with whom God is pleased.”

I am a mom to many and a wife to my best friend. We live on 10 acres of heaven on a small farm that needs lots of work and will keep us busy for years! We love people coming to visit, animals and the peace and quiet that you can only appreciate after living in the city for 20 years. I love to write about our adventures in homesteading, country living, food storage, canning and emergency preparedness.
Please feel free to share any information from this site in part or in full by giving credit to me as author, including a link to www.adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.ca

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Saving money is most times easier than making it and I have found a way to save LOTS of money. In our home we seem to have mountains of laundry to be done but my honest first thought when I heard about making my own soap was - all I need is one-more-thing-to-do...was the extra work going to be worth it?

I decided to give it a try for several reasons. The first was my ongoing struggle with allergies. I seem to be allergic to the strangest things and at times have a wallop of an attack. Life with allergies is no fun so over the years I have looked at nearly everything I come into contact with to see if there was some way I could mitigate the allergic response. The second reason is financial - we seemed to be constantly buying or running out of laundry soap. Even though the cheapest brands weren't always satisfactory they seemed to give me less of an allergic response than the big name brands perhaps because there was less scent. Homemade laundry soap has very little scent to it except clean. The third reason is storage which I will explain in a moment.

Making your own laundry soap might seem like something super-homesteading-large-family-enviromental-frugal people do. Well - perhaps - but it's so simple it doesn't matter what your reasons are - this stuff is fantastic and inexpensive and doesn't make me itch or sneeze (except when grating the soap!) and it super-simple-easy to make and it can be used in a HD washing machine because of the minimual amount of suds AND it does a GREAT job of cleaning your clothes.
Here's what to do:
In a large pot on the stove combine:

about 8 cups of water

1 bar of Linda laundry soap grated

1 cup Borax

1 cup washing soda

All these items are easily found in most grocery store laundry aisles - you've probably just not been looking for them.

I use a pot that is exclusively used for making laundry soap - use an old one or buy on at a thrift store. some people say this is not necessary if you clean the pot out really well after you make it - you decide.I also use a dollar store grater for grating the Linda soap - it's hard to clean afterwards so don't use it for food!

Over low heat and stirring often mix the contents until they are completely dissolved for about 20 minutes.Leaving it on the stove longer won't hurt it - but any shorter and you may not have it completely dissolved.

Add this mixture to a 5 gallon pail and fill the pail till about 2/3 full with hot water. That doesn't sound very exact and that is because it doesn't seem to need to be.Stir using a whisk, immersion blender or a hand mixer - whatever you have. It should turn into a gel by the next day when it cools completely or it may look a bit watery like cottage cheese but either way it cleans your clothes very well. You can re-blend it if it bothers you. That's all there is to it!

Use about 1/16 cup - a heaping tablespoon for the more visual among us - I have a small plastic scoop beside the bucket.If the clothes are particularly greasy or dirty use a little more.

The cost is approx. .05c a load by my last calculations.A pail like that lasts us at least three months (that of course depends on how many loads your family does each month)

But think about this... if you bought:
13 bars of soap $20.00
2 boxes Borax $10.00
1 box Washing soda $5.00
For a total of less than $35.00 you could make the recipe 13 times which would be enough for more than 3 years (39 months to be exact!)
That's less than $1.00 a month..

Can you see why I love this stuff! We've been using homemade laundry soap for 5 or 6 years and I wouldn't switch back for any reason. Frugal. Practical. Simple.

I am a mom to many and a wife to my best friend. We live on 10 acres of heaven on a small farm that needs lots of work and will keep us busy for years! We love people coming to visit, animals and the peace and quiet that you can only appreciate after living in the city for 20 years. I love to write about our adventures in homesteading, country living, food storage, canning and emergency preparedness.
Please feel free to share any information from this site in part or in full by giving credit to me as author, including a link to www.adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.ca

Friday, December 16, 2011

Almost a year ago we
butchered the first animal on our farm. It was a sad day for Jacob the Ram and
honestly it was for me too. Jacob had been on the farm for about three months
to do-the-deed for our ewes - and his owners didn't want to take him home and
feed him over the winter so we struck a deal. We would pay for the butchering
and they would split the meat with us. Now - meat and Jacob just didn't go well
in the same sentence for me at that point. Of course I KNEW what had to be done
but the thought of the actual DOING was another story. It hit a home run into
the knowing-where-your-food-comes-from field.

The night came when
he needed to be delivered to the butchers barn and I was dreading it. The
weather was terrible when his owner came to pick him up but I felt like I
needed to do my part. I helped load him into the back of the van. Just to draw
the picture further that's a passenger van - not a truck - and poor Jacob was
squished between the back seat and the hatch so he couldn't run around. (Can't
you just imagine a Children's book title to tell these stories: A Sheep in a
Jeep - A Ram in a Van) I was troubled but prepared to go with him to drop Jacob
off but he said: The roads are terrible - stay home. He didn't have to twist my
arm. I waved goodbye and guiltily went back into the house.

About a week later we
went to pick up the meat. We met up at the butchers shop and I remember staring
down at little brown packages in a big clear plastic bag and trying to figure
out where to put this new experience in my mind. It felt weird. That was Jacob.
I had known that animal. I had fed him and cleaned up after him and scratched
him under his chin. He was probably going to be the father of my baby lambs.
All these thoughts rushed through my mind in a mad scramble with no where to
go.

The Jacob-meat was in
the freezer for almost two months before we got up the courage to eat it. I
guess we needed time to adjust to the reality of how the cycles of life really
worked. When the kids began to ask if we were having Jacob for dinner I knew we
had all crossed over some invisible line into being keepers of animals and not
just keepers of pets.

We made another trip
this week to bring our 47 "meatie" birds, 7 roosters and 10 ducks to
the abattoir. The day started at 4:45 when we crawled out of bed and had a
quick cup of tea. Four of us rounded up the animals and shoved them squawking and
quacking into specially made crates which we had picked up the night before.
They were then loaded onto a trailer and delivered by the three sleepy men to
the loading dock of Morrisons in Omemee. Then they went out for breakfast and I
went back to bed! I guess this is the part where they aren't the happy chickens
and ducks anymore!

Morrisons is the only
place around that can process poultry and it's a busy place. Trucks and vans
and trailers are lined up waiting their turn to load or unload. We saw one open
tailer being loaded with what must have been 100's of birds ready for the freezer.
In comparison our piddly 65 didn't seem like much at all in the parking lot
although when it came time to deliver them and put the rest in the freezer they
seemed like plenty!

This process was
another great example of paying for your education with real-life experience.
We figure we'll be lucky to break even this time around - here's what I
learned.

Getting meat chicks in
September is later than I want to do this next time.

I don't like cornish cross
birds. They grow so quickly they can hardly walk by the time they are full
grown, they eat a LOT and don't move around that much. They are completely
different from our other chickens who wander the farm and range much
farther. I'll be looking for a heritage meat bird for the next time.

We've tried everything with
the waterers - we just couldn't keep them full and finally went with a
swimming pool in their pen. A disasterous choice for keeping the pen clean
and dry. I'm looking into a drip system for all the birds for next spring.

Ducks cost more than twice as
much to butcher as chickens because their feathers are waterproof and they
take much longer to pluck.

We should have let the ducks
get bigger before we butchered them - they ended up kinda scrawny and far
too expensive for the size!

We have to find another source
or another way to deal with bedding in their pens - so much got wasted.

That's life at Shalom
Engedi Farm and the continuing adventures of a small city girl becoming a small
country farmer - who will perhaps one day actually make some money at this
venture.

I am a mom to many and a wife to my best friend. We live on 10 acres of heaven on a small farm that needs lots of work and will keep us busy for years! We love people coming to visit, animals and the peace and quiet that you can only appreciate after living in the city for 20 years. I love to write about our adventures in homesteading, country living, food storage, canning and emergency preparedness.
Please feel free to share any information from this site in part or in full by giving credit to me as author, including a link to www.adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.ca

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

My DH and I have a
fair bit on our plates like most other people.We live out here
in heaven with animals to care for and 10 acres & a 150 year old home to look
after but there are also the realities of working from home (that's the business
that makes the money so we can live on the farm), family - including more than
a few semi-grown-up young adults - friends, church activities, prepping and
more. Life at warp speed is
complicated without some way of keeping on top of things.

I was finding that we
were having a hard time focussing on what needed to be done next, what needed to be purchased next and what we could do
ourselves and where we needed to hire some help.Somehow moving out to the country also added
the pressure of the seasons to our lives in a way we had not experienced
before...consequently we also needed to find time for some rest in our crazy
schedule. It was certainly no fun to be doing everything at the last minute under pressure when it HAD to be done or missing opportunities because we didn't plan ahead.

I am blessed to be
married to my best friend and abundantly blessed that we are both headed in the same mental direction the majority
of the time - if you knew my DH some would say the direction of the crazy-train.Even so the following has
helped our marriage to become even stronger and reduced the frustration of
unmet expectations of the Honey-Do list.

I'm the nerd of the
family.I love lists and I am pretty
organized so since it was bothering ME that we were not getting as much done as
I thought we could I developed a series of LISTS.

The first is anything
and everything to do with our business which we run from our home.

The fifth the part
time/fulltime job we have working with teenagers and young adults.

These 5 major areas
encompass almost everything we do even though life rarely fits neatly into catagories.

Along with these lists I learned two lessons
a few years ago that have become the
boundary lines that frame the HOW-TO part of what we call the Priority Meetings.

The first lesson I
call the Lesson of the Green Fence.When
we lived in town we had a short section of fencing that ran between our house
and the neighbours at the end of the driveway.It needed staining.It had needed
staining for several years.I got around
to buying the green stain one summer but winter was here before we got the job
done.I was too busy discussing how I
would do it and which brush I needed.I
was concerned about the weather being right and the time it would take to dry.I talked about that fence a lot.For a long time.For at least a year and a half.One bright sunny day I FINALLY talked my
daughter into helping me stain the fence.In 20 minutes we were done - that's all it took.I had pondered and worried and talked about
the fence 10x longer than it actually took to do the job.Lesson 1: Seriously - Just
Paint the Fence! Whatever job you have on your list won't get done by staring at it and mulling it over and over. Good planning is essential of course but there's a point where it becomes analysis paralysis which can prevent you from moving forward at all.

The second lesson I
call the Lesson of the Red Couch.We
were redecorating the family room in our old home.It was a very tiny room so there wasn't room
for much in there but we replaced the flooring and were ready to put the old
and sad looking TV stand back into the room and purchase a new couch. Everything was going according to plan when when I
found THE TV cabinet.It was the perfect
color and size and style and it was ON-SALE.The problem was it was going to eat up the entire budget for the room
AKA the new couch.I made the VERY WISE
and MATURE decision to buy the cabinet anyway.Our puppy had destroyed the couch so we had already taken it to the dump anticipating it's replacement but we would just sit on the floor… it
would be fine...Well that lasted about
two weeks.It was a really dumb idea and
very uncomfortable!I had previously
picked out the couch I wanted.It was
the most beautiful couch I had ever anticipated buying.I had sat on it numerous times. It was RED.
(If you know me at all you would know that was the deciding factor!)It was also a pullout bed so it made
good-practical-sense as well.It was
also expensive...and there was no way to squeeze that much money out of the
grocery budget any time soon.So we went
to the furniture store (the one that has the huge headlines and colorful flyer) and
bought the front-page-on-sale-special-pricing brown couch.It was
cheap.It IS uncomfortable - almost as
bad as the floor.I HATE it.Being a practical girl I can't buy another
couch - I have a perfectly good uncomfortable couch.I'm stuck with it until I can foist it off on
one of my kids when they leave home - that would assuage my
practical-but-guilty conscience and allow me to buy another one but not until
then.I still walk by that red couch on
occasion.I shoulda waited.Lesson 2:Wait for the red couch! Quality is worth the extra money. Waiting is an exercise of self-control and worth it every time!

We then chose Monday nights to conduct our PRIORITY MEETINGS. Each week we cover these 5 topics as best we can and make a detailed plan of what were doing that week and how to keep all the "balls in the air". We use the previous list and update and print it so we both can have a copy on our desks for reference. We were both surprised at how much of a difference this made in our productivity.It reduced stress too and that has been good motivation to continue meeting and discussing.The fact that we make these date nights on occasion and head for a local coffee shop is a great help as well. A bit of advice: if you
choose to try-this-at-home -start small.Somehow on Monday nights you feel like you will be able to accomplish
much more than is realistic and by Friday that becomes apparent when you need
to reside the garage, hoe (by hand) the back 40, stack a years supply of hay in
the barn and provide dinner for 53 guests all on Saturday night.

My list doesn't seem to get
any shorter but we're getting a lot of it done. Looking back over the year and a half we've been here we've actually accomplished a lot but most of it is quickly forgotten until Mr. Farmer the Previous Owner shows up to exclaim (or perhaps shed a few tears) over all the changes and progress we've made.

Communicating about our goals means I know where we're at with our finances, what I need to save for and buy, what's going on this week with the business or the kids and what needs to get done. I have a list - so now it's time to
get off my uncomfortable brown couch and go out and paint another fence!

I am a mom to many and a wife to my best friend. We live on 10 acres of heaven on a small farm that needs lots of work and will keep us busy for years! We love people coming to visit, animals and the peace and quiet that you can only appreciate after living in the city for 20 years. I love to write about our adventures in homesteading, country living, food storage, canning and emergency preparedness.
Please feel free to share any information from this site in part or in full by giving credit to me as author, including a link to www.adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.ca

The Kawartha Lakes Co-operative Auction Market or
just-plain Woodville for short is the not-so-close-by place to go if you're
looking for livestock animals. I've only been there once.My daughter and I were overwhelmed with the
sights and sounds of animals, cars and trucks backing up filled with cages,
people and farm equipment. We had only been living at the farm a few weeks and
at that point our livestock consisted of all of 6 chickens - if you don't count
the barn cats and the city dog.I was so
intimidated by the auction process that we didn't even get a number.I could only imagine ending up with a cow for
scratching my nose at the wrong time.We
decided to just stand and watch and hopefully learn.Like any other auction - things moved along
really fast and I wasn't quite sure how much things sold for or if it was a
good deal or not.We took the
wimpy-route and headed for an area of the property where you could buy chicks
and ducklings without the auction process.We just went to look...and walked away with 4 Muscovy ducklings.Cute little balls of fluff that we didn't
have a clue about.We went back to the
car with them in a cardboard box and then scrambled to figure out what to do
with them on the way home.

They
lived in a hamster cage in our very-back-room (that's the addition to the
addition) until the smell necessitated their removal to a more permanent home
in the barn.These ducks have been a
great asset to our farm.They eat an
incredible amount of bugs, they are very entertaining in their strange
head-bobbing sort of way, and they have provided us with fresh eggs and
recently baby ducklings.

Sometime early this
spring we were thinking about getting some more chickens but somehow a trip to
Woodville just wasn't making it into the schedule with all the other things to
do.Our neighbour Ray was here rototilling the garden when he mentioned he was
headed for Woodville the next weekend.I think going to
Woodville is his Saturday morning tradition and one he rarely misses.Well the two thoughts converged and I asked
him if he would mind looking around for us to see if he could find a COUPLE of Ameraucana
blue/green egg laying chickens for us.Somehow he thought "a couple" was 30 chicks.Mercy - what was I going to do with 30 more
chickens?!!At that point we already had
40 or more.We were really in the
chicken business now!

It takes 18-22 weeks
before chicks get big enough to lay eggs so we waited and waited...I had just
given up on ever seeing a blue/green egg when finally we had the Dr. Seuss
moment I had been waiting for.GREEN
EGGS - no ham.

Most adults would
play this cool - we have increased our egg production.NOT ME!!Yippee we have green eggs!!It
was worth the wait just for the coolness factor.

Almost everyone who
hears about these new-fangled-eggs (that are actually old-fangled if you think
about it) asks HOW COME?So here's your
birds-and-bees moment for the day.Chickens
lay eggs according to the color of…….. their EARS.Really. Betcha didn't even know chickens HAD
ears (yeah - me neither) White eared chickens like leghorns lay white
eggs.Brown eared chickens like our red-sex
links lay brown eggs and black chickens with green ears (I have not personally
ever seen their green ears) lay green or blue eggs.Just for the record the roosters only part in
this is fertilizing the eggs so they can hatch into chicks - he doesn't
influence the color of the eggs.

So what do green eggs
taste like?Well - like an egg.Nutritionally all the eggs on our farm would
have similar nutritional quality because they all eat the same bugs, green stuff
and feed. The color of the shell is just an interesting side bar.

Most of the eggs
currently sold in supermarkets are nutritionally inferior to eggs produced by
hens raised on pasture. That’s the conclusion that Mother Earth News has
reached following completion of the 2007 Mother Earth News egg testing project.
The testing has found that, compared to official U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) nutrient data for commercial eggs, eggs from hens raised on pasture may
contain:

• 1/3 less cholesterol

• 1/4 less saturated fat

• 2/3 more vitamin A

• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids

• 3 times more vitamin E

• 7 times more beta carotene

Mother Earth News
also reports: We think these dramatically differing nutrient levels are most
likely the result of the different diets of birds that produce these two types
of eggs. True free-range birds eat a chicken’s natural diet — all kinds of
seeds, green plants, insects and worms, usually along with grain or laying
mash. Factory farm birds never even see the outdoors, let alone get to forage
for their natural diet. Instead they are fed the cheapest possible mixture of
corn, soy and/or cottonseed meals, with all kinds of additives.

I am a mom to many and a wife to my best friend. We live on 10 acres of heaven on a small farm that needs lots of work and will keep us busy for years! We love people coming to visit, animals and the peace and quiet that you can only appreciate after living in the city for 20 years. I love to write about our adventures in homesteading, country living, food storage, canning and emergency preparedness.
Please feel free to share any information from this site in part or in full by giving credit to me as author, including a link to www.adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.ca

Saturday, December 3, 2011

When I was in high
school I was a mostly average student except in Math - were I was a complete
dunce.My grade nine advanced math
teacher gave me and F+ - the plus for trying really hard and still not getting
it.Having to go through life and not
understanding the intricacies of higher math didn't really impact me at that
stage of my daily life - and I have so far managed without it more or less. Practical math
was more my forte - but then again - you be the judge.

My DH and I have a
philosophy in life. We are of the mind that a non-traditional financial
educational system can be very effective.Some people have another name for our philosophy - they call it paying
Stupid Tax.We've paid stupid tax many
times over our lives and this was no exception - perhaps we should have had a little more input from a professional about building the coop...

Our first chicken
coop was some mathematical equation that reversed all the known rules of our
Universe or at least everything we had ever learned up to that point in our
lives about financial wisdom.On the
whole we're a frugal bunch but somehow it all went out the window when it came
to housing the girls.I'm sure it was
OK/LM x BH=UCC which means Overkill over Lots of Money x Big Headaches =
Ultimate Chicken Coop

Our chicken coop was
amazing!We started out with our
children's playhouse (long outgrown) and turned it into the Most Expensive
Backyard Chicken Coop on the planet.It
had to be perfect.I didn't want my
chickens to live in squalor - they were going to live in a Fort Knox safe,
Martha Stewart organized, Better Homes and Gardens beautiful coop.Oh it certainly was.. We designed and painted
and fiddled and had Handyman Lew come and make changes till we got it perfect.
We even laid sod in the covered outdoor run. It looked so cute and adorable…

...until our 6 red
sex link chickens arrived.Darn things
pooped everywhere and ate the grass down to mud in less than two weeks.It seems they were much less concerned about
looks than I was. I'm not sure that they appreciated anything since they are
rather bird-brained.They just pecked
and scratched and did chicken-stuff while making some quiet clucking sounds now
and then and a few loud squawks when laying eggs.

We worried about them
being cold over the winter.DH won't
admit this in public but he woke me up several times on cold and blustery
nights just to ask if I thought the chickens were warm enough.My sleepy and half coherent reply probably
went something like - if you are so concerned why don't YOU go an check on them
and LET-ME-SLEEP!Ok - I worried too - a
little.But I had been reassured by many
others online that they would be fine even in sub-zero weather and it seems
they were.

Our coop was not
insulated but it was small enough that the body heat of the six girls did add
up to raise the temperature a few degrees from the outside. Of course
without the wind it really wasn't unpleasant at all but then again the hens declined to give me written statements.We installed vents near the roofline to deal
with the "fumes" and in nice weather we left the windows - which were
covered with hardware cloth - open.Air
quality is of great concern for birds.A
dry and reasonably well ventilated space is more important than a closed up tight
and warm one.One of the challenges of any
chicken farmer is keeping the water from freezing.We used the simplest method - we had two
waterers and brought one in to defrost and fill while the other was in the
coop.We changed out the water several
times a day if it was super cold but usually once a day was enough in good
weather.

The outdoor run caused us the most trouble. We built it to withstand an army. We went overkill on the size of the wood we used but it was good and sturdy - you could walk on the joists. We used hardware cloth - not chicken wire which is far too flimsy and not enough to withstand an attack by raccoon or neighbourhood dog. We also added polycarbonite panels to the roof so the run wouldn't get so muddy in the rain - that was a luxury I'm not sure was worth the money. We made one huge design flaw that we were unable to fix and that was the height of the run. It matched up to the roofline but it was a very VERY unpleasant job to clean out the run while bent over - make the run at least 6 feet tall!

For the record we used chicken egg layer pellets from our local co-op store for feed. That's pellets instead of crumbs - much less waste with the larger pellets. I am in the process of finding a more sustainable feed option but it has been problematic for several reasons I won't go into right now. At that point I was more concerned with learning how the whole farming process worked while not killing the chickens with my lack of knowledge. Time for getting creative comes with some more experience.

Starting out with any
new project means there needs to be some money involved.I consider it money well spent when I learn
from the challenges and mistakes I've made.
When I added up the expenses and divided by the number of eggs we got in the one year the coop was in use I think the eggs came out to about $6.00 a piece. A great deal don't you think when you consider it also made a chicken farmer out of me and that was priceless!

I am a mom to many and a wife to my best friend. We live on 10 acres of heaven on a small farm that needs lots of work and will keep us busy for years! We love people coming to visit, animals and the peace and quiet that you can only appreciate after living in the city for 20 years. I love to write about our adventures in homesteading, country living, food storage, canning and emergency preparedness.
Please feel free to share any information from this site in part or in full by giving credit to me as author, including a link to www.adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.ca

About Me

I am a mom to many and a wife to my best friend. We live on 10 acres of heaven on a small farm that needs lots of work and will keep us busy for years! We love people coming to visit, animals and the peace and quiet that you can only appreciate after living in the city for 20 years. I love to write about our adventures in homesteading, country living, food storage, canning and emergency preparedness.
Please feel free to share any information from this site in part or in full by giving credit to me as author, including a link to www.adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.ca

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Please feel free to share any information from this site in part or in full, giving credit to the author and including a link to this website and the following bio.

anitapreciouspearl is a freelance writer who offers information on homesteading, canning and emergency preparedness from her unique perspective by way of her blog www.adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.com. You can email her at anitapreciouspearl@yahoo.ca